


Empty Cavern

by Falcolmreynolds



Series: Stories of the Wide Sky Clan [2]
Category: Event of Exploration: Traveler Returning, Flight Rising
Genre: Gen, someone save him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:27:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25865884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Falcolmreynolds/pseuds/Falcolmreynolds
Series: Stories of the Wide Sky Clan [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1768582





	Empty Cavern

Birdsong echoes outside. Within the large, sunlit cavern, one opening leading out to a glass-roofed greenhouse, one to the open air, and one deeper inside, barely anything stirs; silks drying on lines swayed in the light breeze, and that is all.

There’s a rustling in the hallway. It’s a big hallway, and good for it, because the dragon emerging from it is massive - an imperial, a soft velvety black in color on his belly and sides with a deep maroon color shot through with gold filigree and swirls and brocade on his shoulders and back, with gleaming starlike royal maroon patterns swirling over his shiny black wings. He’s sleek and shiny and beautiful, and he moves almost silently - the rustle was cloth he was carrying with him. He enters the cavern and looks around.

The first thing he notices is the lack of anyone else there. The second thing he notices is a large wooden barrel, filled about halfway full with dark liquid. He approaches, peering in, and recoils, frowning.

It’s dye, that much is clear. And there’s silk in it. But from the smell of the dye, and its temperature, it’s been left far too long.

Satin wouldn’t make an error like this. The imperial - Mute, his name is - looks around. Where is the dyemaker? The embroiderer? Where is he? Moths and butterflies flit through the greenhouse outside, and a few of them flutter around in this room. A lamp sits on a nearby table, long since snuffed out by lack of oil. Is that all?

Mute frowns at the ground. A single tiger lily petal lies, unwilted, on the stone floor. He sets the fabric down on the table and picks up the flower petal.

It’s from Satin’s garlands. Which means he was here. And now he’s not. Where did he go? Where did he go that he just  _ left some of his silk to overdye? _

He would never do that. He’s far too cautious, far to exacting, far too careful and patient. Something must have gone wrong.

Mute first checks the greenhouse, then the plateau outside beyond the door. Neither yield Satin. It’s only then that Mute goes to one of his mates.

Ruval observes his swift, worried sign language. “Gone?” she says, with a frown. “Where?” Mute doesn’t know, by his annoyed signs, and Ruval shakes her head. “I’ll find him,” she says. “Tell Aelius he’s gone.”

She flaps off, and Mute hurries to Aelius, who reads his signs with a quiet gravitas and concern.

“Gone?” he says, and his eye-ridges lower thunderously. There’s a deep rumble in his chest. “He wouldn’t just wander off. It’s not like him.”

“It isn’t,” Windracer says, from the mouth of the cavern. The clan matriarch stands tall and regal, her sky-blue scales dusty from whatever work she was doing that morning. “He’s far too shy for that. If he’s missing, there’s only two options: either he’s run off on purpose, or someone - or something - has taken him.”

Mute scratches his wings. Ever since Larkspur came back from the Sky, he’s had strange feelings and dreams, and those patterns and the color of his scales… something about this makes him think of that. He raises a hand and signs to Windracer, mentioning this.  _ This feels strange. Like the stars I don’t know on my wings. The colors I don’t see right. _

Windracer watches him, and nods. “Recall Ruval,” she says, to Aelius. “I have a feeling even she won’t be able to find our missing tailor.”

Aelius murmurs a word to Scout, his familiar, who turns and bounds out of the room. Windracer shakes her head. “Mute, go on back to your caverns. I think Satin may be beyond our reach, for now.”

Mute bows and hurries off, back to his work. Windracer waits until he’s gone, then winds her way through the caves of the Wide Sky clan’s territory. Already, word of Satin’s disappearance is spreading - who said anything? It must have been Ruval - and she can hear commotion and voices echoing through the stone hallways. She sighs. She’ll have to deal with the uproar in a short while. But first…

She heads down the passageway that keeps Raphide and Larkspur isolated from the rest of the clan, for the clan’s safety - their experiments can be rather active sometimes. Raphide’s lab she leaves alone, heading instead to Larkspur’s. She knocks on the door.

The little spiral - how long ago had she come to the clan, just a bundle of soggy scales and a sad little doll huddling inside a ragged blanket from the rain? She was so different now - flips up a welder’s mask and flutters around the side of some strange contraption she’s working on. “Windracer,” she says, bowing gracefully. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Hello, Larkspur,” Windracer says, looking over the thing. “I would love to stay and ask what this is, but I need your expertise.”

“Oh?”

“Satin’s missing, and Mute thinks it has something to do with the… beyond,” Windracer says, gesturing at her wings. Lark pauses for a moment.

“Satin,” she says, and then, “who… what? Mute - Hm. Where was he last seen?”

“In his caverns,” Windracer answers, and Larkspur’s off like a shot through her lab. She returns in an instant, clad as almost always in her strange mechanical suit, the cards of her fortune deck fluttering around her. She eyes them for a moment and frowns. “Hmm,” she says, and holsters her trident, instead pulling out a small box with a long stiff piece of wire sticking off it that wiggles when she waves it around. “Let’s go.”

Windracer leads her to Satin’s cavern. For all the gadgetry strapped onto the spiral’s body, her movement is almost totally silent. Occasionally her image shimmers, like she’s not really there. When they reach Satin’s cave, Larkspur taps on the box, then flutters out into the center of the stone.

“Oh, well,” she says, and sniffs. “There’s something gone on here. I can sense it. The Sky’s taken him.”

Windracer stares, eyes hard. “Will it give him back?”

“I don’t know.”

“Will I be able to take him back from it?”

“I don’t know that either,” Larkspur says, with a shrug. “Usually it depends on the person taken to determine whether or not they get back.”

“You called on us for help partway through,” Windracer says. “Will he be able to?”

“I don’t know that  _ either. _ Windracer, I don’t know where he is in the Sky. It’s a rather large locale. I also do not know what took him. I just know something did, and its magical signature -” here she taps the box, and the screen lights up with a great deal of colored squiggles - “doesn’t match any Sornieth signatures. It’s not one I’m familiar with, either. I’m not sure why it would have taken him. It definitely should have taken me instead. The Sky knows me. So why… never mind. Never mind! It rarely has reasons for what it does.” She sounds almost frustrated. “I would’ve enjoyed the chance to go back, really. Perhaps that’s why it didn’t take me. But why  _ him? _ ” She looks to Windracer. “No offense meant to anyone, but unless you want something stitched, he’s completely useless.”

“I’m worried about him,” Windracer rumbles, choosing not to address the ‘useless’ comment. No one was truly useless. Just adapted for different things. “From your stories, the things out there are far tougher and crueler than him, and they will destroy him given the opportunity.”

Larkspur floats to the ground and coils up, folding in on herself, a pair of sharp blue eyes in a pile of multicolored technology. For a moment, the entire suit shimmers, and the only thing Windracer can see are those eyes, floating in the air. It unnerves her. “It’s possible,” Larkspur says, voice as cool and slithery as always. “He’s not built for great adventures or momentous occasions. Or even small adventures. I saw him cry after he had to hit a bird off his flowers once.”

Windracer nods. Satin is  _ not _ meant for things like the Sky.

“But I also know,” Larkspur continues, “that the Sky is very strange, and it likely won’t have taken him alone.”

“There will be others?”

“Probably. I can’t imagine the Sky letting anyone wander through it unaccompanied. Not anyone from Sornieth, anyway. It seems to dislike lone Sornieth dragons. I think they cause it too much trouble.” She  _ hmmm _ s. “Come to think of it, I thought I felt a strange tugging the other night, but resisted it, on the account of not wanting to be bothered by something nonphysical. It’s possible that whatever took Satin wanted me first, but couldn’t get me, so it went for something else.”

The implication here, of course, is ‘Satin is gone because of you.’ Windracer doesn’t say it. She knows better. Larkspur couldn’t have known that. “If it tried to take you,” she says, “then would it have taken anyone else from Sornieth that you knew?”

“Oh, very possibly,” Larkspur says. Her eyes glitter. “In which case… if certain dragons that I know are there, things will get very interesting for him indeed. I wish him the best of luck out there. Now, Windracer, if you’ll excuse me, I must send a message to a few other clans inquiring about a few of their members, and to my mentor to find out if he’s still around. If Caustide went, well, Satin might come back like me.” The corner of her mouth curves back in a smile. “Wouldn’t  _ that _ be something?”

_ It would. And I hope it does not happen. _ Satin is a soft, sweet thing, as innocent as a dragon can get. He cared for silkmoths and refused to kill them for their cocoons, for pity’s sake. He wasn’t like Larkspur. She’d always been quiet and wounded and cunning and sometimes cruel; it had just been overpowered by fear and shyness before her journey into the Sky. The only thing hiding under Satin’s anxiety is a soft, loving heart, just compassion and kindness. If the Sky forces him to do half the things that it forced upon Larkspur, he will shatter, like glass dropped to the floor. She knows it.

Windracer nods to Larkspur, who spreads her wings and flutters off, back towards her own caverns. Satin is beyond either of them now. The clan matriarch steps through Satin’s cavern. It looks like Mute removed the silk from the barrel, though it does look like it’s a bit damaged from it’s long soak. Maybe it’ll be salvageable, who knows. She certainly doesn’t.

_ Where are you, Satin? _ She wonders, as she paces out through the opening to the Plateau’s outside, soft warm summer winds and sunlight. She looks up towards the vast expanse of the blue sky, and the Sky beyond it, somewhere amongst the stars.  _ Where are you? What took you? Are you alright? Will you come back to us? _

It’s out of her claws. There’s nothing she can do but wait. It makes her shudder - the thought of one of her own alone, out there, with no one to protect or care for him.

She understands that dragons need to stand up for themselves sometimes. But… Satin?  _ Satin? _ He’s… not like other dragons. He doesn’t fight, he doesn’t argue, he just runs and hides. He just wants to stay in his cavern and take care of his moths. That’s  _ it. _ And now he’s out there, all alone -

Maybe not alone. Lark said other dragons might be out there. Which ones? Anyone Windracer knew from Larkspur’s reports? She runs through them in her mind, but she knows there’s no way to figure out who might or might not have been pulled out of Sornieth for… whatever reason.

Still. She can hope. She can hope that those out there will be merciful and kind, will be the kind of people who will understand Satin and protect him. “Please,” she whispers, looking up to the sky. “Please. Keep him safe. Keep him safe, when even I can’t.  _ Please. _ ”

She doesn’t get an answer. No one hears her. The only thing that she has is her own hope that he’ll return, safe and sound, unchanged, undamaged, without the love stripped from his heart like it had been with Lark.

“Please.”


End file.
